There have been demands for effectively and efficiently performing tests on a virtualized system (which will be called virtual system hereinafter) in an environment establishing the virtual system by deploying plural virtual machines in a physical server group and linking the deployed plural virtual machines over a network. Today, in general, such a virtual system is developed and is tested in a smaller environment for development/tests than the environment where the virtual system is actually operated, which is physically and specially prepared separately from the real operating environment.
The physical isolation between the real operating environment and the development/test environment can exclude the risk that the system in development/test adversely affects the real active system (such as a malfunction in the system in development causes the termination or a misoperation of the real active system). However, the development/test environment and the real active environment may differ (including a difference in hardware of physical servers and a difference in software such as the version number of the OS (Operating System) or a library). This frequently causes problems that a malfunction, which has not been observed in the development/test environment, is discovered after the system is operated in the real active environment or that a malfunction occurs due to a setting error in porting the system from the development/test environment to the real operating environment.
Notably, various technologies in the past have been available for such a virtual system, which however do not focus on the problems described above. Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-221649, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-299425, and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 4-195436 disclose a related technique.
In recent years, uninterruptive operation services are an important system requirement. That is, there are increasing necessity and importance for testing a configuration change in a system (such as a change in the number of linked virtual machines or a change including the application of a security patch) and porting the system after the configuration change to the real operation without interrupting operation services in operation. However, it is difficult to address the request presently.
Furthermore, the tests to be performed may include, for example, a test that checks changes in behavior of a virtual system as a result of a change in number of virtual machines in the virtual system. It is inefficient to set the parameters therefor manually and deploy and establish a virtual system interactively every time the parameter value is changed.